Owen Trinkler Wins CTMP 120 Pole; Ben Rhodes to Start 3rd

TeamTGM’s Owen Trinkler won the pole for Saturday’s Canadian Tire Motorsports Park 120 with the fastest Michelin Pilot Challenge lap of the weekend Saturday morning. The lap of 106.271 mph was two-tenths of a second faster than the best practice lap on Friday.

KohR Motorsports’ Nate Stacy will start fourth in another Ford, while Murillo Racing’s Jeff Mosing will start his Mercedes in fifth. Russell Ward will start sixth in the Mobil 1 Mercedes, then Motorsports In Action’s Corey Fergus in a McLaren. Riley Motorsports’ James Cox will start eighth, while Compass Racing’s Paul Rees and Automatic Racing’s Ari Balogh will round out the top 10. Matt Crafton qualified the second Multimatic Motorsports Ford 15th in class (19th overall).

Canadian Tire Motorsports Park is an interesting track when it comes to the TCR cars. They are faster in the first sector of the track than the Grand Sport cars by quite a bit. The fastest TCR first sector is more than three-tenths of a second faster than anyone in Grand Sport.

That provides a decent explanation for how jumbled the actual qualifying results are. JDC-Miller MotorSports’ Mikey Taylor won the TCR class pole with a lap at 105.417 mph. With 24 Grand Sport cars in the field, this lap was good enough for seventh overall, two-thirds of a second off of the overall pole.

Taylor’s lap was nearly a half-second faster than Bryan Herta Autosport’s Michael Lewis, who won the class pole last weekend at Watkins Glen. Teammate Mason Filippi will start third in the second Hyundai, followed by LA Honda World Racing’s Shelby Blackstock. Ryan Nash will start fifth in class in the No. 12 eEuroparts.com ROWE Racing Audi.

Three cars out of the 38 entrants did not set times during the session. They were the No. 8 eEuroparts.com ROWE Racing Audi R8 LMS GT4 and the No. 59 KohR Motorsports Ford Mustang GT4 in Grand Sport, along with the No. 84 Atlanta Speedwerks Honda Civic Type-R TCR in the TCR class.

About Phil Allaway

Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor. Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as Tony Stewart's Arctic Cat All Star Circuit of Champions.